Companions
Question: What does it sound like if instruments were personified as our companions?
Context: “Companions” is an exposition of the relationships that are formed between humans and musical instruments through the process of building rapport and learning the language of the body with which one is interacting. Both in the physical and metaphysical sense. Christen and Afraaz explored sonic possibilités and stories through bringing the musical instruments (characters) to life through their discourse which was generative and spontaneous.
Project type: Collaborative project with Afraaz Mulji
Role: Audio recorder, Interviewer, Audio Editor
The Flute Cries to the Moon
In the hollow of the central courtyard of the Aga Khan Museum, Christen and Afraaz sat in contemplation, swathed by the crystal caress of the mashrabia abstracted tessellations encircled with stone geometric mosaics. It was under the auspices of the generous and aesthetically titillating architectural magnificence, on a cloudy, windy afternoon, that the flute cried into the wind. Akin to wolf howl, only to disappear into the night. The dented metalwork of the singing bowls caught the ambient light, and shimmered gently, dancing in the shadows. Abstractions abound as voices interplay into the terraced, textured, myriad captured in this "room" of contextual dialogues.
Humans are creatures of pattern. We notice pattern, difference, interplay. It is what allows us to abstract the nature of reality through interacting with it and each other. As a spiritual context, repetition is both a method and a means. However, it is in the "going beyond" that the pattern disappears, and one is left to dwell in the 'silent nothingness' of it all.
Wind serves as a spiritual reminder, that the intangible can be felt, and experienced. A zen symbol and state.
As the flute cried, we asked, who is she crying for? Why my dear, the silent mystic nodded, she is crying for the moon.
Antiphonal congruences are abound in these recordings. They are rendered as a wholeness of "spirit" and 'form' undergirded with formlessness, from which all stems.
Come not with expectation, but with openness. That is the spirit of these works. We played and frolicked as companions, and that is evident when one listens to the clarity and conviction of the capturing of spontaneity which arose from the comfort and safety of the "other" and now.
T'was in the hollow.